Three years in Metro Manila. At the very end of my pursuit of a Masters degree. I have worked with professional orchestras, choirs, performing groups, met local and international composers, won an award.
At this point I have two options: Either stay in Manila, add more to that list, while my finances and social life hangs by a hair-strand.
Or I could go back to the south, be a professor, be of help, be settled, be safe.
But I don’t want to be safe. Not now, at least. There is a time in human life when one passes through a dark tunnel. I, at 25, am in my tunnel. Uncertain of the future, but I can only go forward. Only forward. Only forward. If I go back, I go back a different man. And that is good. But I’ll be doomed to live the rest of my life wondering what’s waiting on the other side had I not turned.
* * * * *
The elections, and the campaign that preceded it, is only matched by the season’s temperature. During which time everybody’s talking. So naturally, I shut up.
Social media has magnified the best and the worst of the Filipino, which is why on May 9, I was introduced to a strange amalgamation of emotions; I simultaneously felt proud of and disgusted with this nation. I casted no vote, and felt powerless; the only absolute that day.
The president-elect who says “Putang ina” a lot said “Tabangi ko ma” as he wept at his parents' grave five 3ams ago. Neither the English translation “Help me, Mom” nor the Tagalog “Tulongan mo ako, Nay” captures the weight of that line. To the Bisaya, “tabangi ko, ma” is childish, almost silly, so humiliating that in another context could be made fun of. It is a verse of humility; a surrender.
Seeing him revert back to being a child is seeing beneath the Putang ina exterior; both ends of the spectrum. It changed the way I look at the man(not that I don’t already know of his reputation as Mayor). I watch him on interviews and I don’t see a “decent”, archetypical politician, but a father, tightening his jaw, banging the dinner table, “Kung mo ingon gani ko’g undangi na, undangi na!”
It’s dawn in the Philippines, any moment a new era will rise with the sun. But whether or not change comes, ultimately depends on us.
As I write this, a man named Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is now very close to being the Vice President of the Philippines.
I will now go back to being a composer.